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The J5 have during the week of November 5th, brought together their leading data scientists, technology experts and investigators in a coordinated push to track down those people who make a living out of facilitating and enabling international tax crime.

The event, known as ‘The Challenge,’ was hosted by the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) in Amsterdam to identify, develop, and test tools, platforms, techniques, and methods that contribute to the mission of the J5. The Challenge focused on identifying professional enablers facilitating offshore tax fraud and financial crime posing a threat to the J5 jurisdictions.

Experts from each country gathered with the mission of optimizing data from a variety of open and investigative sources available to each country, including offshore account information. Using various analytical tools, the teams were tasked to find schemes, identify potential enablers, and propose actions to J5 leadership to address these threats.

At the conclusion of ‘The Challenge,’ each team identified new targets of investigations, developed investigative schemes to address those targets and increased their ability to share information and find similar patterns and targets in the future.

“Financial crime goes across borders,” said Hans van der Vlist, General Director of FIOD. “That is why operational collaboration is essential and possible. The J5 is a great example. The goal of this challenge is to define unknown professional enablers of tax fraud and financial crime.”

In addition to the Challenge, the J5 has already identified and is actively pursuing a number of professional enablers suspected of facilitating significant tax fraud across international boundaries. J5 partners are now working jointly to tackle each of these enablers through coordinated international action. These individuals were identified through intelligence sharing between J5 members since the alliance was formally announced (PDF 212KB)This link will download a file earlier this year in Montreal, Canada.

The J5 has also made progress in identifying websites that enable fraud through the promotion of schemes to hide income and assets offshore. J5 partners have shared intelligence and capability to collectively close in on these enablers by monitoring their users and using that in their investigations into those involved in these schemes.

Sources:

According to DoJ, a former U.S. Congressman Stephen E. Stockman was sentenced on November 7, 2018 to serve 120 months in prison and ordered to pay $1,014,718.51 in restitution, to be followed by 3 years of supervised release, for orchestrating a four-year scheme to defraud charitable donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars and secretly to funnel the proceeds to pay for personal expenses and to illegally finance his campaigns for public office.

“At trial, the government proved to the jury that former Congressman Stockman ran his campaign and fraudulent charities to simply enrich himself and defrauded well-meaning donors,” said U.S. Attorney Patrick.

Former U.S. Representative Stephen E. Stockman, 61, was convicted by a federal jury in Houston on April 12, of 23 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to make conduit contributions and false statements to the Federal Election Commission, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, making excessive coordinated campaign contributions, money laundering, and filing a false tax return. 

Two of Stockman’s former congressional staffers previously pleaded guilty in the case. 

• Thomas Dodd, 39, of Houston, Texas, pleaded guilty on March 20, 2017, to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to make conduit contributions and false statements. 
• Jason T. Posey, 48, of Tupelo, Mississippi, pleaded guilty on Oct. 11, 2017, to one count of mail fraud, one count of wire fraud, and one count of money laundering.

“Former Congressman Stockman was entrusted by his constituents to serve in their best interest,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge DeSarno.  “Instead, Stockman used his position in a series of schemes for personal gain at the expense of the public.

Today’s Sentence Should Send a Clear Message

That the Laws of the Land Apply to Everyone,

Regardless of Position or Power.

 



According to the evidence presented at trial, from May 2010 to February 2014, Stockman and his co-defendants solicited $1,250,571.65 in donations from charitable organizations and the individuals who ran those organizations based on false pretenses, then used a series of sham nonprofit organizations and dozens of bank accounts to launder the money before it was used for a variety of personal and campaign expenses.

Specifically, the evidence established that

• in 2010, Stockman and Dodd solicited an elderly donor in Baltimore, Maryland for $285,000 to be used for legitimate charitable and educational purposes. 
• Stockman and Dodd used a sham charity named the Ross Center to funnel the money to be used for a variety of personal expenses. 
• The evidence further established that, in 2011 and 2012, Stockman and Dodd received an additional $165,000 in charitable donations from the Baltimore donor, much of which Stockman used illegally to finance his 2012 congressional campaign. 

The trial evidence also showed that

• shortly after Stockman took office as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2013, he and Dodd used the name of another sham nonprofit entity, Life Without Limits, to solicit and receive a $350,000 charitable donation, to be used to create an educational center called the Freedom House.  
• Stockman, Dodd, and Posey instead used this donation for a variety of personal and campaign expenses, including:
• illegal conduit campaign contributions,
• a covert surveillance project targeting a perceived political opponent,
• an in-patient alcoholism treatment for a female associate, and
• payments for hundreds of thousands of robocalls and mailings promoting Stockman’s candidacy for U.S. Senate in early 2014.

In addition, the evidence established that,

• in connection with Stockman’s Senate campaign, Stockman and Posey used another sham nonprofit entity to secure a $450,571.65 donation in order to fund a purportedly legitimate independent expenditure promoting Stockman’s candidacy.  
• The evidence showed that the purportedly independent expenditure was in fact secretly controlled by Stockman, who directed his campaign and Posey to file false affidavits with the FEC covering up Stockman’s involvement. 

Finally, the evidence at trial demonstrated that Stockman failed to pay taxes on any of the $1,250,571.65 in fraudulently acquired donations.  In addition, during the early stages of the investigation, Stockman directed Posey to flee to Cairo, Egypt, for two and a half years so that Posey could not be questioned by law enforcement.

 

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On November 1, 2018 President Donald J. Trump issued a new Executive Order 13850 (E.O.) blocking all property and interests in property of any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State:

1. to be operating in the gold sector of the Venezuelan economy or in any other sector of the Venezuelan economy as may be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State;
2. to be participating in any transaction or series of transactions involving deceptive practices or corruption and the Government of Venezuela or projects or programs administered by the Government of Venezuela;
3. to be an immediate adult family member of such a person;
4. to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any activity or transaction described in section ii above, or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the E.O.; or
5. to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to the E.O.

Want to Emigrate to the US?

Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A.

for a FREE Tax Consultation Contact us at:

www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com

or Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888 882-9243).

According to Law360, The Internal Revenue Service rejected actor Wesley Snipes' offer to settle his tax debt by paying 4 % of what he owed. (AP).

However, Tax Court Judge Kathleen Kerrigan said Snipes did not produce “bona fide documentation” beyond affidavits of misconduct from his financial adviser, showing that his income or assets had been dissipated.

“The [IRS] settlement officer did not abuse her discretion in determining that acceptance of [Snipe’s offer-in-compromise] was not in the best interest of the United States,” Judge Kerrigan said, effectively holding up the IRS’ filing of a tax lien.

Snipes had argued that an IRS settlement officer, who was unnamed in the court’s decision, had abused her discretion by excluding his allegedly dissipated assets and by not investigating his adviser, W. Johnson.

However, Judge Kerrigan disagreed, finding the settlement officer had followed the revenue agency’s published guidance, “spent considerable time and effort” to determine Snipes’ income, equity, assets and transfers of real property, and ultimately lowered the IRS’ estimate of what it thought it could reasonably collect from Snipes from nearly $17.5 million to about $9.6 million.

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

 

 

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:

www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com or

Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888) 882-9243